Coinerella’s European cloud migration highlights the trade-offs of alternative clouds: they’re more demanding but can be more cost-effective.
Cloud sovereignty, local presence, and “alternative cloud” approaches are frequently viewed as straightforward configurations within major cloud provider platforms – simply select a region, tick a compliance box, and proceed. However, IT consultancy Coinerella documented their journey of transitioning from a standard US-centric startup infrastructure to a “Made in the EU” tech stack. They redefine sovereignty as a fundamental architectural principle and an operational framework capable of delivering cost savings. This path, however, entails challenges, necessary trade-offs, and a greater degree of responsibility compared to relying on established cloud ecosystems.
Coinerella intentionally designed its platform to avoid reliance on AWS and other US-centric hyperscalers. This decision was guided by practical needs like data residency, GDPR adherence, minimizing vendor lock-in, and showcasing the operational capabilities of European infrastructure. While many leaders champion sovereignty, their resolve often wavers at the first sign of a production issue, compliance audit, or integration hurdle. Coinerella, however, has maintained its commitment, actively tackling the associated challenges.
Building a ‘Made in the EU’ Technology Stack
Instead of developing entirely new approaches, Coinerella achieved sovereignty by reconstructing a contemporary platform using European service providers and strategically self-hosting certain services. Their core infrastructure, encompassing primary compute, virtual machines, load balancing, and S3-compatible object storage, was migrated to Hetzner. What makes this significant is that while the common hyperscaler narrative implies a loss of features when moving away from AWS, Coinerella discovered a different reality, particularly for essential services. They reported robust performance and capabilities, along with an attractive cost structure, rivaling many AWS experiences.
Where Hetzner lacked a necessary managed service, Coinerella augmented its infrastructure with Scaleway, covering needs like transactional email, a container registry, supplementary object storage, observability tools, and domain registration. While integrating multiple providers typically escalates complexity in migrations, Coinerella deliberately embraced this strategy, opting for the optimal regional solution for each component instead of relying on a single vendor for all requirements.
For edge services, Bunny.net was chosen to provide content delivery, along with associated features like storage, DNS, image optimization, web application firewall (WAF), and DDoS protection. This decision underscores that edge services are not merely supplementary but integral to a platform’s overall reliability and security. According to their blog, the transition felt manageable, especially for those accustomed to Cloudflare, which is a key advantage when aiming to mitigate risks during a migration.
Furthermore, Coinerella tackled AI inference with sovereignty in mind, leveraging European GPU resources through Nebius instead of routing inference requests to US regions. For identity management, they implemented Hanko, a European authentication solution that supports contemporary methods like passkeys and accommodates standard login practices, including social logins.
Crucially, Coinerella opted to self-host a significant suite of internal services on Kubernetes, managed by Rancher. This setup included Gitea for source control, Plausible for analytics, Twenty for CRM, Infisical for secrets management, and Bugsink for error tracking. Anyone familiar with advising enterprises to self-host “just a handful of services” understands the true implication: it signifies entering a new operational agreement where cost savings and increased control are directly tied to full lifecycle ownership.
Unexpected Challenges and Additional Obstacles
The most insightful aspect of Coinerella’s report details the challenges encountered with seemingly mundane services, which often prove critical for developer efficiency. Transactional email emerged as a significant hurdle. While the US ecosystem offers abundant, refined, and easily integrable options with extensive community support for deliverability and troubleshooting, Coinerella successfully implemented a European alternative. However, the key lesson is evident: the wealth of integrations, templates, and community solutions varies considerably across different regions. It’s not that the service is non-functional, but rather that organizations might frequently need to act as their own integration specialists.
Source control presented another set of difficulties. The transition from GitHub extends beyond merely changing a Git remote; it involves departing from a comprehensive ecosystem—including CI/CD defaults, actions, marketplace integrations, and the ingrained operational habits of developers accustomed to GitHub’s methodology. While Gitea provides a robust base, it doesn’t automatically replicate the complete development pipeline that comes “free” with the prevailing platform.
Cost disparities also surfaced. The author observed that certain top-level domains were notably—and sometimes dramatically—more expensive via European registrars, without a clear justification. While this isn’t an architectural showstopper, it exemplifies the practical realities of such migrations: they are rarely perfectly predictable. Unexpected variations in market dynamics will arise, requiring decisions on their significance.
Inevitable External Dependencies
For those seeking a narrative of complete independence from US dependencies, this isn’t it. Coinerella recognized that certain dependencies are fundamental. User acquisition frequently necessitates Google’s advertising network, and mobile app distribution often routes through Apple’s developer program. Social login functionalities are commonly tied to Google and Apple infrastructure, and eliminating these can negatively impact conversion rates. AI further complicates matters: accessing cutting-edge frontier models might compel reliance on US-based APIs.
The more prudent approach suggested by this blog is to minimize avoidable dependencies, compartmentalize those that are unavoidable, and transparently acknowledge the trade-offs involved. Sovereignty is not an all-or-nothing proposition; rather, it exists on a continuum of decisions regarding the location of core data and operational infrastructure.
Transitioning to an Alternative Cloud Environment
Coinerella’s journey reflects insights gained by many enterprises exploring alternative cloud solutions, such as sovereign clouds, private clouds, and other non-mainstream platforms. The primary lesson learned is that the financial appeal of such a shift often stems directly from undertaking greater responsibility. While reduced infrastructure costs are achievable, they are accompanied by heightened demands for integration, expanded platform engineering efforts, and a greater necessity for operational sophistication.
This scenario inevitably brings forth the crucial “want versus need” discussion. Hyperscalers have accustomed teams to selecting managed services with the ease of ordering from a menu, driven by convenience, speed, and political expediency. Alternative cloud strategies, however, necessitate rigorous prioritization. While you might desire the latest managed features, the most extensive marketplace, and the broadest ecosystem, these might not be essential for achieving your core business objectives. Opting for sovereignty or a private cloud foundation frequently leads to choosing simpler, fit-for-purpose technologies, even if they lack the bells and whistles of their more glamorous counterparts. This isn’t a step backward; it’s a testament to architectural discipline.
Nonetheless, successful adoption of these strategies hinges on implementing new operational practices. FinOps evolves into an engineering discipline, encompassing diverse providers, self-managed platforms, and capacity planning decisions that can no longer be delegated to a hyperscaler. Observability transforms into a paramount design consideration, given that you are constructing a platform that spans various environments and incorporates components under your complete control. This mandates consistent metrics, logs, traces, service-level objectives, and incident response protocols that function seamlessly despite varying tools and APIs across providers. With increased in-house responsibility, greater clarity is required for patching, security, backups, recovery testing, and the development of operational runbooks.
The core message isn’t that this endeavor is excessively difficult. Rather, it’s difficult in discernible patterns. Coinerella’s account demonstrates that, while challenging, the undertaking is valuable—a crucial perspective for enterprise leaders. Approaching sovereignty as a mere product feature will lead to disappointment. However, embracing it as a strategic stance that demands genuine engineering dedication allows organizations to achieve the desired control, favorable cost structures, and locality advantages without being caught off guard by the effort involved.
